Let me present a counter-opinion. I found KiCad to be surprisingly useful, not for super-complex boards, but for significantly more than just the simplest of pr

Let me present a counter-opinion. I found KiCad to be surprisingly useful, not for super-complex boards, but for significantly more than just the simplest of projects (I'm using it for four-layer boards with controlled impedance tracks and differential pairs). Yes, there are bugs and annoyances. But not enough to shell out 6kEUR or so for the next step up in EDA tools (which would be Altium Designer, and I'm not even mentioning the maintenance fees, just the initial payment). For our business it simply doesn't make sense to spend that money given how well KiCad does its job. Going into details — I only use the OpenGL mode, ever (because of the push&shove router). These are the things I would like fixed/improved: — copper plane handling: copper planes from different nets do not avoid each other, which should be considered a bug, — push&shove router will happily push around my carefully placed differential pairs, breaking their alignment, and NOT TELL ME ABOUT IT (the last part is the worst), — DRC doesn't check diff pairs, — I'd like to see easier via stitching. The rest are inconveniences, which every CAD package has. Also, most of this discussion focuses on PCB design. It is worth mentioning that the schematic drawing is pretty well done, and the resulting schematics look good. Also, the idea of associating footprints separately from schematic symbols is a very good one and lets me reuse footprints better. Overall, I found KiCad to be perfectly suitable for nearly all hobby projects, and very capable for professional work, although with some caveats, and not for everything out there. I think I would not try to use it to route high-speed boards with more than 6 layers. Let's also look at this from a different perspective: these days, as a hobbyist, I can simply start DOING electronics and easily get to 4-layer controlled impedance designs. Given the wonderful chips that are available these days and the availability of services like OSHpark and OSHstencils, this means you can really do impressive stuff, without spending anything on EDA tools. The upfront start-up cost is zero. This is fantastic and is a great achievement of the KiCad team. I am very grateful for that.